My Longest Run Ever!

Well I woke up this morning a little sore from my intense weight training session yesterday. Also I knew today was the day of my longest run ever. Yes in 3 short weeks I will be running my first half marathon and today marked more training.

I was not feeling like running on the treadmill today, I saw the sun and was hoping for an outdoor run. But once I started walking outside I realized it was not possible, there was black ice everywhere :( I slipped twice while walking down the street to go to the gym! So I was not going to chance an injury this close to my race.

So off to the dreaded treadmill I went. I knew it would be harder because the treadmill is so hard mentally to over come a long run.I tried to combat this with a running magazine and it helped for a bit. But I kept peeking and this got me down. At mile 5 I honestly wanted to quit. I started thinking that I could not do it, it just seemed so far away. I remembered I had to do a 10K for the Sisterhood Olympics so I knew I had to get to 6.2 miles, but after that I really wanted to hit that big red Stop button on the treadmill.

Around mile 5 I stopped for my 30 second walk and water break, I glanced at my phone. I saw tweets from all of my wonderful twitter friends encouraging me to go for it and enjoy my run. It reminded me of this journey and what I was working for. It reminded me of my half marathon coming and what I wanted to accomplish. So I kept going. I ran 6.2 miles in 57 minutes and 25 seconds for the sisterhood 10K. Then I kept going. I had 4 more miles to go and I knew I had to finish strong.

The last 4 miles were the easiest. It was like I had found my rhythm and felt good. I was running a pace of 8.5 min per mile and it felt great. I knew then around mile 7 that I would finish 10 miles. And the last mile I ran at 7.5 min I knew then that I could and would keep going in 3 weeks. I finally realized that no matter what my mind was trying to say, my body could and would handle all 13.1 miles and maybe even hit my target to do it under 2 hours!

So I beat the mental mind game of the treadmill once again and finished my 10 mile run in 1 hour and 30 minutes!!!!! It felt great, I felt like I accomplished something. Then I felt so tired :) but its a good tired. I wish I could take a picture of my Polar monitor but my phone is broken and my camera needs to be charged but I burned 875 calories :)